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Point based moderation generates toxicity, hacker news gets toxic too. Stack Overflow went all in on moderation before they understood the social consequences o

• clairity 10y ago
  this is a really important point. how do you curate for good content while not demoralizing contributors? and it's a more generalized social challenge. in coaching for example, you need to improve a player's abilities and instincts, which essentially implies that what they're currently doing is not so great. the easiest people to coach understand that they are not already perfect. those who are hardest to coach are those who already believe they are good enough. for the player, there's a tension between having the self-esteem to assert yourself while having the maturity to accept criticism. you need to be able to encourage both behaviors while maintaining a balance between them. as you point out, the challenge for an online moderation system is providing a similar balance to users/contributors. the social distance between contributors and moderators makes it hard not to become defensive.
  • shagie 10y ago
    With a dozen exceptions for the diamond (elected) mods, all the moderators are from the community and got to that point with contributions. Nearly all of the are still contributing and moderate as part of the process of trying to find things to answer.
• pjc50 10y ago
  > moderation system that cares about how it makes people feel Definitely something that's very much needed. But I don't think anyone knows what it would look like and what the distribution of emotional labour would be.